Reason why director Bong Joon-ho makes comeback with SF film ‘Mickey 7’

Director Bong Joon-ho met “Mickey” before the original “Mickey 7” was even published. Warner Bros. bought the copyright on the novel by American author Edward Ashton when it was just a draft. The novel tells the story of Mickey Barnes, a young man who becomes a test subject for colonizing an ice-covered space planet in a near-future where humans can be cloned. He volunteers to be “expendable” and is repeatedly put into dangerous tasks. When he dies, he is “printed (copied).” He is cloned with his past emotions and memories and thrown into the wilderness again.

Warner Bros. sent a 14-page summary to Plan B, a production company known in Korea for “Okja,” released in 2017, and “Minari,” released in 2020, which was later sent to Bong. “The novel is kind of weird, so it just flowed to me because I make a lot of weird films.” Meeting with Bong at the Conrad Hotel in Seoul, he said he was immediately drawn to the concept of the work. “The idea of being able to tell a human story,” he said, is why he decided to film a novel.

“He’s not a professional industrial accident worker, and he’s a character whose job is to die, which is weird.”

The number after Mickey refers to the number of lives he is living. In the film, the main character, who is played by actor Robert Pattinson, is the 17th Mickey, after suffering 16 brutal deaths and being reborn with the experience. He died 10 times more than the “Mickey 7” in the novel. “The film is also a coming-of-age story for Mickey,” explained Bong, ”and 17 and 18 are the numbers of adulthood, so I thought about that line.”

“Mickey 17” is Bong’s eighth feature film and is his fourth science fiction film. His previous films depicts the antics of ordinary people in unique settings, such as monsters appearing in the Han River (“The host”), class divisions on a train traveling through an ice age (“Snowpiercer”), or a conglomerate creating super pigs for meat production (“Okja”). Each of these films offered a critical perspective on political reality, class consciousness, and anthropocentrism.

When asked what message he was trying to convey in his new film, Bong said, “I don’t like to give a message like spoon-feeding.” He added, “As a filmmaker, I think fun and beauty come first. I want the audience to be drawn in by the situation, characters, and words.”

Bong described himself as “someone who majored in sociology but can’t digest big discourses.” He said, “Instead, I start from strange details or things in the corners. When he saw the concept of “reprinted human beings,” he did not come up with a pedantic message, but rather “concrete and practical questions.”

What would it feel like to see my body printed out? How would it feel to be in this person’s (Mickey’s) skin, because it would be painful and unpleasant to be constantly put to work doing something you deserve to die?

Mickey, the young man, is at the center of the question. “Mickey seems to be a happy man but he is facing a very cruel situation. The cowardly community repeatedly lets a child die and doesn’t feel guilty about it. Mickey does something important, but they downplay it.”

Bong places Mickey in the place of young men who have lost their lives in industrial accidents. “There will be other people working in that places where the accidents occurred,” he said, referring to those who have had accidents at the thermal power plant (in Taean), at the screen door (of Guui Station), and at the baking machine (of SPC-affiliated company). “Mickey being cloned is a fantasy, but there are Mr. Kim, then Mr. Park, then Ms. Yoon… the jobs are still there, and the humans are still being replaced,” he said. ”I think that’s what filming science fiction is all about: exposing reality.”

Bong said, “When I make a film about anything, I need a time distance.” It was an answer to the question, “What would you focus on if you were to make a film about the emergency martial law declaration on December 3, which seems to be science fiction?”

Bong said, “Even when I watched ‘12.12: The Day,’ which deals with martial law and coup d’état with a time gap, (people) were terrified of the dictator.” He added, “At least it was 44 years ago, but for those who were comforted, the recent emergency martial law is actually a wound, a mental collective trauma.” He also dismissed criticism that the scene in which dictator Marshall (played by Mark Ruffalo) is sniped in the film is reminiscent of the attempted assassination of U.S. President Donald Trump, saying, “The scenario has already been written in 2021.”

“Mickey 17,” which is set to be released in Korea on February 28, is a brutal and hilarious adventure story in space in 2054. It is up to viewers to find the “present” in the story of characters who “still make the same mistakes and repeat them even when they go to space.”

※This article has undergone review by a professional translator after being translated by an AI translation tool.

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